Public Burning (81 page)

That last pitch—the mounting rhythms, the repetitions, the “right now!” evangelical challenge—all that was straight out of Dr. Rader's memorable Los Angeles sermon, and I looked about now for friends of the cloth—Billy Graham, Dr. Peale, Father Sheen, Ezra Benson—seeking their support and encouragement: maybe I could even get one of them up here with me! But the person who caught my eye out there in the mob was my own father: he looked like somebody had just hit him between the eyes. He blinked twice, looked around in amazement, then leapt out of his chair and, thumbing off his elastic braces, cried:
“That's tellin 'em, sonny!”
Down went his baggy britches, underneath which he was wearing his old white longjohns (good old-fashioned homespun appeal in that flannel underwear, I told myself hopefully, though in fact I felt myself turning fifteen colors of the rainbow, as embarrassed for him as I was for myself), and while he fumbled with the big white buttons, others began to follow suit—or unsuit: first, friends like Bill Rogers and Bert Andrews, Mundt and O'Konski, then Bill Jenner, Tom Dewey, my brothers Donald and Edward, Homer Capehart, Strom Thurmond, George Smathers, and with that some of the Democrats, too, guys like Stennis and Rivers, Don Wheeler, Jimmy Byrnes…

“IT'S A SHOWDOWN!” they cried.

“PANTS DOWN FOR GOD AND COUNTRY!”

“PANTS DOWN FOR JESUS CHRIST!”

“WHOOPEE!”

“FOR THE COMMON MAN!”

“DEEDS NOT WORDS!”

“PANTS DOWN FOR DICK!”

It was spreading now, spreading fast, some of those larger-than-life Cowboys were dropping their chaps, the Pilgrims, Riverboat Gamblers, and Doughboys, governors and judges, secretaries and bureaucrats, and on out into the masses beyond: I saw old Joe Kennedy's pants come down in a twinkling, Herbert Philbrick's, too, Yehudi Menuhin's and Hopalong Cassidy's, Rocky Marciano's, Sumner Pike's—and it was even catching on among some of the left-wing radicals—Humphrey Bogart, Dean Acheson, Walter Lippmann and Herbert Lehman, Ralph Bunche, John L. Lewis—the din of crashing belt buckles and ripping zips was deafening! And women as well—Eisa Maxwell, Teresa Wright, Bess Truman, all the ladies in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir—all hiking their skirts and pulling down their drawers, corsets, girdles, whatever they had up there! A few of the more fastidious types were pulling their pants all the way off, but most of them just left them in a heap around their feet, staggering about in tight little circles to cheer the others on and see what their neighbors had. There were scattered screeches of protest from the timid, a few ugly assaults by the lunatic fringe, small riots breaking out in the vicinity of Mickey Mantle, Marilyn Monroe, Captain Video, and Eleanor Roosevelt, and a major stir when Christine Jorgensen's drawers came down, but essentially it was a great success, a real vote of confidence! Not that it wasn't a pretty traumatic experience to see Mom with her underwear ballooning down around her feet, Dad in a ferocious Black Irish fit, still tied up in his longjohns, or Pat, the strain showing on her thin sad face from trying to hold back the tears, stoically raising her printed cotton skirt and fumbling with her garters, but I knew that, whatever the cost, I'd won the day, the victory was mine!

“I have a profound conviction,”
I cried,
“that with that kind of patriotism, that kind of love of country, we shall never lose sight of the American dream! And with that spirit, we shall make that dream come true! I pledge to you tonight that I shall meet—“

“Hey, dat's ma boy, over dere, doing dat!” laughed Uncle Sam coldly, striding forward to cut me off at last. Behind him, I saw Herb Brownell and Irving Kaufman, their pants half-lowered, not knowing which way to jump. “Lo, how he urges and urges, leavin' the masses no rest nor britches neither! Hoo boy! it takes a long cumbustificashun to throw dust in the eyes a commonal sense!” He looked outwardly cheerful, but under the forced laughter it was plain to see he was really smoldering—and for good reason: after all, if I was right about his having rigged this entire humiliation ceremony for my dubious benefit, I had turned the tables on the old coot and fucked up his timetable to boot!

I glanced coolly up at the clock:
Wha
—
?!
It still said seven minutes to eight!
“Just…just let me say this last word!”
I stammered.
“Regardless of what happens, I—I am going to continue this fight! I am going to—.!”

“Great Beltashashur!” stormed Uncle Sam, lifting me up in the air by my collar, the dead weight of flag and pants dragging down my dangling feet. “One more last word outa you, mister, and I
tell
you what you're gonna do: you're gonna find your damfool sittin'-piece on ‘tuther side a the Great Divide! The thrill is gone, boy, every rainmaker becomes a bore at last, so zip your lip! In times like the presence, men shouldn't utter nothin' for which they wouldn't willingly be responsible from here to eternity and back—you ain't the only pebble on the beach! We got a couple
burnin
issues on the docket tonight, we gotta ‘sist a coupla
flamin
Reds,
firebrands
a the
infernal
Phantom, to see the
light
, and we don't need no more of your hissin' and blowin' and generally discom-bobulatin'
splutterations!”

Well, I might have taken his warning to heart—true luck consists, after all, not in the cards, but in knowing just when to rise and go home, Green Island had taught me that and Uncle Sam himself had put it into words for me—if only he hadn't blown at my shirttails (“What is that which the breeze,” he wondered aloud, “as it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?”), clucked his tongue ruefully, and with all the cameras dollying in, remarked wistfully to the mob at large:
“Ah, vanished is the ancient splendor!”

“Wait a minute!”
I hollered through the freshly unleashed crash of derisive laughter.
“Wait just a goddamn minute!”
The laughter subsided for a moment, and there was a moment of grinning silence, waiting to be filled. Even though I was still dangling by the scruff of my neck, I plunged right into it:
“MY pants are down! YOUR pants are down! EVERYBODY'S pants in AMERICA are down! Everybody'
‘s—
EXCEPT HIS!”
This stunned the Square. A deadly hush fell over everybody. That, I thought, is what you call putting a cap on it….

“You fool!”
rasped Uncle Sam, dropping me back down on the stage. He glanced apprehensively up at the night sky, dark and starless.
“You're going too far!”

I was frightened (how had it got so dark so soon?), but I had passed the point of no return—it was like lurching offside in a football game and seeing the flag go down, yet having to complete the play just the same, no matter how punishing and futile:
“The chips are down! If you're not with us, you're against us!”
I cried.
“And until the facts are in, a doubt will be raised!”

I had shocked everybody with my sudden challenge, but now, slowly, steadily, a chant sprang up and began to sweep through the Square: “PANTS DOWN! PANTS DOWN! PANTS DOWN!” Louder and louder it grew, spreading, swelling, more and more insistent, led now by some cheerleaders with big red “I's” on their white sweaters (they moved slowly, dreamlike, as though in great awe of the occasion), while behind them drummers from some band thrummed a heavy augmenting beat.
“PANTS DOWN! PANTS DOWN!”

“What mad project of national sooey-cide
is
this?” complained Uncle Sam, clearly taken aback by the spontaneous uprising—there was nothing more terrifying, I knew, than the aroused voice of the people. As they shouted, he looked slowly about him, as though at the threshold of some door or other, his blue gaze falling finally on me. A gentleness seemed to settle over him, a kind of sadness—I felt sorry for what I had done, and I wanted to take it back, but my heart was in my throat and I couldn't speak—and then he seemed almost to grin. “Okay, son,” he said, or seemed to say, as he settled back on his heels: “Experience keeps a dear school, but fools as they say'll learn in no other.”

I stood rooted to the stage floor, petrified with terror and anticipation, my eyes glued helplessly on his strong pale hands as they pushed back his sky blue swallowtail coat, unhooked his braces and unbuttoned his fly, gripped the waistband of his red-and-white striped pantaloons, and pushed them down.

There was a blinding flash of light, a simultaneous crack of ear-splitting thunder, and then—

BLACKOUT!!

28.

Freedom's Holy Light: The Burning of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

There is panic and some scream:
“UNCLE SAM IS DEAD!”

“DEAD!”
comes the echoing scream, and terror rips through the hooded Square like black wildfire, a seething conflagration of anti-light, enucleating the body politic:
“LEMME OUT A HERE!”

Out! the people want out!—but where is out? The emptiness at the edge has inundated the heart, the center is gone, the power cut, there's no way in
or
out!

“IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD!”

“THE VICE PRESIDENT'S DONE IT NOW!”

“HOWLY JAYZUSS!”

It is utter madness to try to break out, worse madness to stand still—the communicants, following in the footsteps laid down by their heritage and so seized as ever by the American go-go-go mania, lurch violently in all directions at once, shackled by dread and drawers, flailing their arms about wildly, and so being wildly flailed by what, in this unnatural darkness, this nighttime of the people, seems like some mindless hundred-armed monster! like a black forest of disconnected centipede legs! OH MERCY!

“UNCLE SAM IS DEAD!”

“WHO CAN SAVE US NOW?”

And in the nighttime of the people, there is a great wailing and gnashing of teeth, just like in the old days, a million-mouthed moan more horrible than the roar of Behemoth! People cry out to God, to Christ, Ike, Con Ed, the Pope, to anyone who might listen, who might help, to the Forefathers, to the FBI, Bernard Baruch, loved ones here and gone, fearing even those they call upon, Wyatt Earp, the Statue of Liberty…

“MADRE MIA, WHOSE THIS IS THE SWEET LAND O'—HA-A-ALP!”

In the nighttime of the people, everything is moving and there is nothing to grab hold of. The very pavements seem to dissolve into an undulating quagmire, vortical and treacherous, dragging the screaming citizens by their bundled ankles into the deepest bowels of the earth! Or perhaps it is the violent restlessness of the bundled ankles that is disemboweling the earth—who, since none can see, can say?

“WHY IS IT SO DARK?”

“THEY'VE TURNED OFF THE WHOLE UNIVERSE!”

“WE SHOULD NEVER HAVE BROKE THE SOUND BARRIER!”

Imbalances are unchecked and human dignity is trampled upon in the nighttime of the people. Pageant figures crash into each other, their big heads bursting like ripe melons! Anxieties scurry like vermin, manhole covers rattle underfoot, plate-glass windows explode and splinter, and behind the shouts and moans and crashes and the dreadful ticking of what can only be the Doomsday Clock can be heard the hollow evil laughter of Uncle Sam's worst nemesis since Nimrod Wildfire….

“OH NO!”

“IT'S THE PHANTOM!”

“THE PHANTOM'S KILLT UNCLE SAM!”

“HE'S STOLE THE LIGHT!”

“HE'S FREED THE SPIES!”

“AND NOW—!”

“—HE'S AFTER US!”

Fears, in the nighttime of the people, seem almost to materialize, to rise like palpable fog from the stricken hearts of the multitude and coil into unseen but damply felt shapes, nebulous, capricious, but no less manifest than destiny itself was in a sunnier time: fears of the Russian Bolsheviks, the Chinese Reds, of cabalists and parlor pinks, Gooks, Nips, Huns and Huks, fears of Hottentots and Snollygosters, MIGs and Mau Maus, existentialists, cancer, Pusan whores and tortured truths!

“YIKES! ONE OF 'EM'S GOT ME!”

“TAKE THAT, YOU SONUVABITCH!”

“I CAN'T BREATHE!”

“AA-AR-RGH!”

In the nighttime, thus, the people wrestle with their fears and with each other, not knowing whether what they've got hold of is a diseased idea of the Marxist Virus, Nigger Nate's scrotum, the mess in Washington, or their own grandmother! Principally it is their own sudden and unprecedented impotence that terrorizes them, but sometimes this fear feels like the dry rot of corruption and Communism, other times it's got the texture of a boxcar of pussyfooters or the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms!

“YECC-CH! IT STINKS!”

“IT'S ALL HAIRY!”

“IT'S GOT A MOUSTACHE!”

They feel themselves swarmed about by mousy little engineers, scabbed sheep, dirty books, and goon squads, but when they lash out, try to get a handle on what's tormenting them, the emanations dissolve and mutate, leaving them with nothing more than a numinous armload of the March of Time, heavy water up the snoot, and a fistful of torn Jell-O boxes and sweaty pubic hair….

“MY GOD! IT'S A CREEPING SOCIALIST!”

“A FIVE PERCENTER!”

“THE FIFTH COLUMN!”

“YEE-EEEE-K!”

“THE VOICE FROM THE SEWER!”

“IT MUST BE ALGER HISS!”

“THE ANTICHRIST!”

“HOLY SMOKE!”

“BRING BACK THE LIGHT, LORD!”

“LIGHT!”

But the light does not return, and in the ever deepening nighttime of the people, the shapes of their fear are drawn from ever deepening wells, roiling visions of the imminent imbalance of terror commingling now with shades of half-forgotten nightmares from all their childhoods: V-2s and gas ovens and kamikazes, the hurricane that tore through Overlord, the holocaust at the Cocoanut Grove, gremlins and goose-steppers, malaria, unfaithful wives, starvation at Guadalcanal, TJ-boat wolfpacks and Jap snipers and warplanes over Pearl Harbor, vampires and striking workers, hoboes, infantile paralysis, bread lines, bank failures, mortgage foreclosures and dust storms, King Kong and Scarface Al, Wobblies, werewolves, anarchists, Bolsheviks and bootleggers, Filipino guerrillas and Mexican bandidos, the Tweed Ring, earth tremors, the Cross of Gold! Down they spiral into irrational panic, as upward swirl the spooks of terrors past! Chinafyers! Assassins! Jim Crow! The Wild Bunch! Robber barons and longhorns! Black Jack Ketchum, Butcher Weyler, and Rattlesnake Dick! Du Bois! Debs! The Daltons and Darwin and the lone pray-ree! Amelia Bloomer! Maria Monk! The Grangers and Youngers and Molly Maguires! Flaming crosses! Hookworm! Apaches! Carpetbaggers! Booth and Buckshot and Billy the Kid! Sherman's Bummers! Amputation! Bleeding Kansas! Dead Man's Gap and yellow fever! Humboldt Desert! The Alamo!